"A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd "I have no comment," or "We shouldn't judge." Instead he said, "My mother had me when she was 18," which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn't have to."

-Peggie Noonan, Wall Street Journal 10/31/2008

A Higher Purpose

Honesty is Virtue

This election in the past couple of weeks has become a referendum on HONESTY. And the most dishonest players in this race are McCain and Palin. The Republican candidates for the highest office in America spend little time talking about their own virtues and policies and almost all of their time speaking lies about their opponents.

When addressing an agitated extremist base, they attribute ideas, philosophies and polices that Obama and Biden have never endorsed, advocated, or supported to them with snide derision. On the campaign trail McCain and Palin's claims have grown increasingly more strident, inaccurate, and frankly wildly freaky.

In Iowa just a few days ago, Palin with her confusing malapropisms, told an audience Obama would confiscate property, investments, inventory, and destroy all the values we teach our children, moving America toward tyranny and away from freedom. This Communist red-baiting is HOGWASH and non-sense born of desperation. But what it clearly shows is the extent that McCain and Palin will use all kinds of lies and deceit to gain political power.

McCain and Palin are not truthful people we can trust with leadership in America.

Endorsement from Another General

In his endorsement of Barack Obama, Lt. General Robert G. Gard warns of flaws in character that are detrimental to McCain's ability to lead the country.

"The fields of foreign and national security policy, however, are John McCain's disqualifying weaknesses, in my view. McCain has demonstrated clearly that he is a dedicated ideologue when it comes to foreign policy, unwilling to consider opinions or even credible evidence contrary to his preconceived notions.
His temperament, marked not only by impatience but also by rude and sometimes hostile behavior, would discourage advisors from bringing to his attention views that might not be consistent with his preconceptions. A President with this combination of significant shortcomings would be a dangerous commander-in-chief, posing an unacceptable risk to the security of the nation.
McCain has adopted, promoted, and sustained the position of the so-called neo-conservatives and ultra-nationalists who believe that the United States should capitalize on American military superiority to spread democracy abroad. Overthrowing the Iraqi government was seen as the first step in transforming the politics of the Middle East by converting governments in the region to democracies friendly to the United States and its interests. McCain reportedly has bragged in private conversations that he was the first neo-con."

- Lt. General Robert G. Gard Jr. (USA, Ret.)

"Whack-Job" from Wasilla

Here is a woman who doesn't know the difference between socialism, communism and rheumatism. Yet she just keeps getting more and more wacko in her speeches and misrepresentations of the truth. McCain's own advisors have been calling her "Rogue Diva" and "Whack-Job"

Palin's Iowa speech is extremist stupid-talk way way out on the fringe since Obama never advocated confiscating wealth nor does he intent to raise taxes on the middle class. Lie, lies and distortions of reality is not the qualities we look for in the leaders we sent to Washington. Maybe they do in Alaska?

The statements from McCain ads about Palin that are more telling than the pet-names Rogue Diva and Whack-Job was the statement that she has the trust of nobody in the campaign and "her family." Wow, that's pretty rough-talk. Her own family doesn't trust her?

“But I also know this. I know that the size of our challenges have outgrown the smallness of our politics. I believe that Democrats and Republicans and Americans of every political stripe are hungry for new ideas, new leadership, and a new kind of politics — one that favors common sense over ideology; one that focuses on those values and ideals we hold in common as Americans.

“Most of all, I believe in your ability to make change happen. I know that the American people are a decent, generous people who are willing to work hard and sacrifice for future generations. And I am convinced that when we come together, our voices are more powerful than the most entrenched lobbyists, or the most vicious political attacks, or the full force of a status quo in Washington that wants to keep things just the way they are.”

- Barack Obama. October 27, 2008

So what? Did you say SO WHAT!

A lot of people like to assume that businessmen and self-starter entrepreneurs are Republicans and they support McCain. Not so. Absolutely no so. This group is a political PAC of businessmen I know who are progressive forward thinking citizens and strong supporters of Barack Obama.

Even before Obama came onto the national scene, this group of proven leaders in the business sector were deeply troubled with the direction of the country and the arrogance of power that Bush, Cheney and the Republicans used their office toward bad ends.

Opie and Andy

Ron Howard, Andy Griffith and the Fonz.

“Government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.”

- Barack Obama, August 29th, 2008

Video Shows Hate in McCains House

Straight Talk from A Man of Honor

Colin Powell is a General, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State in the Bush Administration as well as a centrist Republican.

"What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon -- that sees our opponents as competitors to challenge, but not enemies to demonize."

– Barack Obama, June 3, 2008

McCain 4.0 or Not?

Hope and Change

As much as the professional spin-doctors and political cynics want to twist the truth and create a evil view of Barack Obama, he is just like the rest of us, a decent American who is committed to change for a better future and a greater America.

Listening to Republicans

Too Close for Comfort

Obama and the Third Way

"To me, a good politician should be like a good designer: someone who will not force a constituency or a client into making a choice between the lesser of two evils but who can put the energy into discovering a third, obviously better way to solve a problem. I would like to see more politicians who, like Barack Obama, show this kind of creative thinking."

- Innovative Architect and Designer Erin Moore who's firm FLOAT Architecture Research and Design was located in Tucson AZ until recently when moved to Williamette Valley, Oregon

McCain: What it means to be a Maverick

I guess one can be comforted with the fact that the RNC did return in its final night to the feeling of a morticians convention. You have to admire John McCain's heroic suffering in Vietnam but I was afraid not that I'd fall asleep during his speech but that HE would. Clearly, this man's time was 8 or 12 years ago but he's way past his prime.

Obviously, the rabid and extremists among us will never change their views on this political campaign. Those who seek government mandated creationism and prayer in the schools, the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, 50 more years of war for peace, and oil drilling and taxpayer subsidization of oil companies everywhere will not suddenly join the euphony of hopeful agreeableness and jump on the Obama train for change.

Likewise, women who have spent three and four decades fight for equal pay for equal work, the right of women to control their own bodies and choices of all kinds for women are not going to suddenly embrace the Phyllis Schlafly-styled Sarah Palin as their goddess Sophia arriving to elevate all women in history. Palin may have brought women's fertility into the political field of play but she ain't a 21st century crusader for the rights of women.

One thing that is clear from the RNC is John McCain is a maverick. All week long I wanted to know what being a maverick meant for the Senator from Arizona, a military-man from a long line of military men, and how it manifest itself in modern day Republican politics. Is being a maverick a good thing or bad thing? Being a maverick is not necessarily being an advocate for change or for better policies.

Apparently, being a maverick means being willing to stir things up, make rash and erratic decisions and having an all-be-damned attitude about it. It means getting angry and accusatory toward anyone who questions your vetting processes and finally the decisions the maverick makes. It means being willing, for the sake of winning and election, to drive wedge politics between urban and rural voters that will divid the nation rather than unite us to make America a better country.

I admire McCain service to country, however, it is time for McCain to put country first and go home to retirement with benefits. Enjoy one of your seven or eight or nine houses - you deserve it. You've made your sacrifice John, spending all of your life on the government payroll and we will not ask you to do more.

And more pointedly, I appreciate McCain's sacrifice for his men and country as a captured American soldier in Vietnam but I do not think we need the same old solutions of the past eight years to the issues we need solved today. We need change in America, not the old wars to fight and past battles with fixed terms of reference that have no relevance.

Sexism and Sarah Palin

Who "...retreats behind the apron strings." - Dick Morris

A Candidate to Change City Hall

Brian E. Anderson will return fun to City Hall. Careful, that's what Jesse Ventura said about the Governor's Mansion and look what happened to the Body.

All politics is local but think polka! Meet the Minneapolis Mayoral candidate who has the loyal support of his family.



Brian has a crackerjack team of political strategists who are prepare to take his campaign to a whole new level. Watch this behind the scenes clip from action inside the War Room:



Stand by your phones because you might receive his next call!

Finally, A Candidate of the People

Second Avenue, Village East, New York

Village East Cinemas, New York
Originally uploaded by Cezar Del Valle

For all the years I lived in the East Village, the Yiddish Art Theater, a building on 2nd Ave and 12th street with a bold and controversial history in the East Village was boarded up. Now it has been reopened as the Village East Cinema. The building is considered to be Romanesque Revival in style or also referred to as Queen Anne.

Second Avenue in New York was often called the Yiddish Tin Pan Alley and was considered a mecca for Jewish intellectuals and artists. This January marked the finale curtain for an era in the East Village when, regrettably, the Second Avenue Deli closed after a lease dispute between the landlord and the family heir Jeremy Lebewohl shut them down. The original founder Abe Lebewohl, a holocaust survivor was shot to death on March 4 1996 during a robbery. The Second Avenue Deli has confusingly reopened its doors in Murray Hill on East 33rd Street minus the Molly Picon Room and its walk of Yiddish stars.

During the 1980s it was often assumed that the Yiddish Art Theater had been the home of legend rock-and-roll promoter Bill Graham's Fillmore East, a venerate rock-and-roll institution during the 1960s but, in actuality, Fillmore was three blocks to the South on 2nd Ave. Along this gritty New York avenue, beneath 14th street and the origins of Park Avenue south lived a less luxurious working class immigrant Jewish cultural life where matzoh ball soup, corned beef, pastrami, knishes, gefilte fish, cholent and other notables of Jewish cuisine filled the gullet of working Jews who lied shoulder to shoulder with Beatniks (in the 50s) hippies (in the 60s) and eventually punk rockers and yuppies (in the 80s and 90s)

On one trip back to New York a few years ago, a friend commented that Williamsburg Brooklyn was the new East Village. Maybe that's not fair to Williamburg and with the history of the East Village it is not fair to 2nd Avenue, its rich cultural traditions and history of the 20th century.

The Cinema of Urgency

It is amazing that Juan Guzman is not dead. The story of Judge Juan Guzman and his investigation of Chile's General Augusto Pinochet is a portrait of courage exercised by an average man in the face of brutal repercussions and death.

Last night, the film that opened the Walker Art Film series, The Cinema of Urgency, was Elizabeth Farnsworth and Patricio Lanfranco's THE JUDGE AND THE GENERAL made for ITVS and scheduled to be shown on POV in mid-August. Farnsworth was born in south Minneapolis and her editor, Blair Gershkow who also attended last night's screening and stood up for Q&A afterward is a native of St. Louis Park, Minnesota - home of the Coen Bros., Thomas Friedman, and of course Al Franken.

The films Producer/Director Elizabeth Farnsworth was chief correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer from 1995-2000. She now freelances for The NewsHour and makes award-winning documentaries, including Thanh's War.

The remarkable story of Judge Guzman is about a conservative judge assigned to investigate crimes and human rights violations by the military dictatorship of Pinochet and his government. Originally, Guzman was a supporter of the military coup that brought Pincochet to power. He even felt that some of the violence surrounding the coup and the suspension of democratic processes might have been necessary to restore order in the face of chaos.

However, during Guzman's investigation, which miraculously occurred while Pinochet still held the reigns of power, he discovers a grisly truth of the murder and torture of socialists and anti-military government political activists. And in the face of threats on his life and accusations of the betrayal of his class, Guzman did not back down.

What makes Farnsworth's documentary so compelling is Guzman is not the radical maverick judge one might expect and instead he is a literary man, quiet and reserved, with a French wife who could well have been given a diplomatic portfolio by the conservative government that Salvador Allende defeated to become the first democratically elected Socialist government in South America.

Farnsworth also focuses on the human rather than political dimensions of the struggle for truth. Inside the story of the "disappeared" and mothers of resistance in Chile is another tragedy of a grandmother forced to turn her own daughter and son-in-law into the CIA trained Chilean secret police DINA in exchange for saving the life of her granddaughter who she was babysitting at the time. The brutality of DINA's torture and the excruciating pain of a grandmothers decision is unfathomable to us, still its echo reverberates in Abu Ghraib and secret detention facilities run by the American government today.

During the course of his investigation, Guzman's soul opens to the bright light of human rights in the face of conformity and the dark abyss of apathy when governments call their opposition terrorists. This should be a lesson to all Americans in these corrupt and desperate times.

As Guzman memorably states abut Chile's history, “A wounded country needs to know the truth” and healing can only come when the deceptions, manipulations and lies are exposed.

Minnesota North Shore Trip

Patricia and I took a summer vacation trip to Minnesota's majestic North Shore. Taking the legendary Highway 61 form Duluth's Bob Dylan Way, we traveled first to Beaver Bay and visited the Split Rock Lighthouse.

Built in 1910, the Split Rock is a marvel in architectural and mechanical engineering when no roads existed along the shoreline leading to Canada. All brick and mortar, materials, and labour had to arrive at the construction site by inland sea and lifted by hoist 168 feet to the top of the Split Rock and then assembled. Construction workers slept in tents in the mosquito infested forest while building the lighthouse and surrounding out buildings. The lamp, lens and rotational mechanics for the lighthouse itself weighed 4 tons. The bearing on which the axis turns is made of liquid mercury. The entire lighthouse community cost $75,000 to build in 1910.

The Split Rock Lighthouse was operational from 1910 to 1969 when it closed because Lake Superior ships contained their own satellite navigational devices and the lighthouse was no longer needed. In 1972 the Minnesota State Historical Society took over the management of Split Rock and reopened it to tourists. They don't build structures like this anymore.

Lunch back in Beaver Bay was at the Lemon Wolf Cafe, a place recommended to us as a favorite of the locals. Lemon Wolf serves fresh walleye and herring caught in Lake Superior by a local Beaver Bay fisherman. We felt the dining-room decor was a bit over the top, oddly chainsaw bears dominating the wolf name, but the food was delicious. Surprisingly, Lemon Wolf's homemade Grammy's Coconut Cream Pie vastly outclassed Betty's World Famous Pies in down the road in Two Harbors.

On the second day we visited the shipping harbor town of Two Harbors, Minnesota where gigantic Ore Docks built in 1883 loaded the iron ore from Minnesota's open pit mines. Two Harbors, still operational but at a reduced capacity, shipped millions of tons of ore to the East for decade after decade beginning in the late 1800s. In 1944 during the height of World War II, Two Harbors shipped 19.3 million tons of ore to fuel the American victory in Europe and the Pacific theater.

One of our most enjoyable adventures was visiting the Edna G. tugboat in the harbor after first doing a self-guided tour of the Two Harbors Lighthouse which is the oldest still operational lighthouse in America. (or at least Minnesota, okay?) and recently became a B&B. The Edna G, was named after the daughter of the president of the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad Company J.L. Greatsinger. The Edna G was built in 1893, spent most of it life on Lake Superior with the exception of being commissioned into the U.S. Navy during WWII and sent to Virginia. where it guided troop ships back into harbor upon their return from war. At the time of her retirement in 1981, the Edna G. was the last coal-fired, steam-powered tugboat operating on Lake Superior.

On the aft deck of the Edna G is a brass water canon the tub boat used to assist in extinguishing fires on ships out at sea and other emergencies. The "Invincible Nozzle" had so much water pressure, it could float thirty yards off shore and roll a Dodge van up a hill for 50 yards.

Our guide let Patricia pull the handle that blew the whistle in the pilot cabin. Check it out:



Back in Beaver Bay we enjoyed long walks in the woods and climbing on the rocky shore line of Lake Superior.

Finally we ended back in Duluth and went to the Tweed Art Museum at the University of Minnesota Duluth campus. In part of the museum we found a library dedicated to Olive Tezla, the mother of our good friend Michael Tezla who beginning in 1957, when her husband joined the English Department as a professor, was a strong supporter who helped built the Tweed. Just down the hall I discovered where my old MacPlus with its 20 MB (that's right megabyte NOT gigabyte) hard drive has been retired for historical reasons right next to the key punch and mechanical adding machines of our youth.

Next we went to the very notable artisan eatery, the New Scenic Cafe and we met the chef Scott Graden. Highly recommend!

Obama Comes to St. Paul in Victory

Last night Senator Barack Obama came to our home town of Saint Paul, Minnesota to claim an historic victory as the first African-American to win enough delegates votes to become the Presidential nominee of a National Party. Obama came from the back of the pack to defeat the heavily favored and highly connected D.C. insider Hillary Clinton. His message was clearly CHANGE and his supporters motto: "Yes We Can!"

In his Saint Paul victory speech, Obama showed how is has become one of the nations best political orators as national broadcast commentators compared him to FDR, JFK and Martin Luther King for his ability to deliver a moving speech. when he said, tonight after 56 hard fought primary contests our journey has come to an end, an palpable excitation of exhaustion and relief came over the crowd but being in the Xcel Center in Saint Paul marked Obama's determination that it isn't over yet. This will be the site of the RNC and John McCain's Republican nomination in September. Obama's long climb into history is still ahead and the next five months to the finish line has just begun.